Articles in this section

Ongoing scam: Edmunds escrow fraud

Question

Does Edmunds provide an escrow service where they hold/ship/handle the transaction of a car?

Answer

No - Edmunds does not sell vehicles, authorize private party sales, or offer an escrow service. Quite a few websites have recently surfaced using the logo, style, and design of Edmunds to promote an online escrow service. This is a known scam.

Edmunds is a US-based company and does not hold an office in the UK. If you are speaking to someone who you believe to be an Edmunds representative, please be sure to check their email address. All authorized Edmunds employees will have an edmunds.com email domain and not an address with a hyphenated domain such as support@edmunds-inc.net.

If you are currently working with someone that you believe is affiliated with this scam, we encourage you to cease all communication as soon as possible. If you have sent payment, please be sure to contact your bank immediately to see if they can reverse this.

For more information, as well as tips on how to spot online scams, please read the following article: https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/online-car-buying-fraud.html

The only official Edmunds site is www.edmunds.com. Check that “edmunds.com” is the domain – meaning that edmunds.com should appear at the end of the URL, or just before any forward slash. Here is an example of an edmunds URL: https://help.edmunds.com/hc/en-us. If you come across a site that you believe to be Edmunds but you are unsure, please feel free to contact us at help@edmunds.com.

Once you contact this Craigslist add, you will be asked to work with an escrow company that has physical possession of the automobile in Detroit, MI. That company will “look” like Edmunds.com. It is not the real Edmunds.com. This is a very elaborate scheme using real a real VIN. I even went so far as to order my own Carfax report and called the dealer who last changed the automobile’s oil. Everything checked out as legitimate that the car really exists and the escrow company does as well. Local law enforcement even ran the VIN and the car did exist and was not stolen. The scammers even set up dummy corporations that look like they physically exist with customer reviews on Google.

The vehicle was offered on carsforsale.com and was supposed to be in California:-

It is still for sale and I'm willing to sell it for US $26.000. The car is registered on my name, it has 33,000 miles, the title is clear (VIN WP0AB2A83BU780635- no lien, accident free) also it drives and runs great. It is located in Santa Monica,Ca and I'm selling it because I'm not in US anymore. I live in UK with my family now.